Why I think TFP happens in John’s head: abridged version.
The main reason why I favor the idea that at least TFP is a product of John’s imagination, is because I feel we’ve been waiting for John’s big moment as ‘conductor of light’. And finally, at the end of TLD, he very prophetically said “I’m gonna make a deduction”. I take that as foreshadowing of TFP, which I think is about John attempting to explain why Sherlock is the way he is.
Ever since the beggining, and all through the show, John has been trying to figure Sherlock out. “Has he ever had any kind of girlfriend, boyfriend, a relationship, ever?!”,
he asked Mrs. Hudson. It was his job in the canon; we understood Holmes
through Watson’s adoring eyes. John’s blog is his diary about Sherlock. He knows Sherlock. He knows he’s an emotional being who loves intensely, is affectionate, kisses people on the cheek, has even more friends than himself, is
clingy
and jealous of him, and must feel things That Way.
So why would he ever want to put on that ‘conceal don’t feel’ façade? Obvious: past trauma. Remember how invested John was in Henry Knight’s case back in THoB. He told Dr. Mortimer “I think my friend might be having the same problem”. So
in this hallucinatory dream, ‘clever boy’
John tries to apply the solution of that case to Sherlock, thus coming up with this plot about a crazy sister, clever “beyond Newton” (seriously, that doesn’t sound to me like something Mycroft would ever say, but more like John’s way of thinking), to account for it, and in the process he basically works out M-theory too.
“Sherlock, there’s something you need to know; Mycroft’s been lying to you, to both of us”.
Just like John remembers Frankland fed lies to Henry since he was a child who couldn’t cope with that trauma. (“Twenty years of my life making no sense!”).
John finally joins the dots and realizes Mycroft must’ve been under Moriarty’s thumb somehow, so he makes that the key point of his dream. He comes to understand that Mycroft’s always been trying to ‘protect’ Sherlock in a wrong way instead of treating him like a capable adult, and figures he’s the one to blame for Sherlock’s cold persona, as well as causing John and Sherlock to continuously drift apart. John reckons Mycroft basically ruined Sherlock’s life, so his anger-ridden sense of justice condemns Mycroft by adding the whole ‘he should die’ scene, placing an avenging gun in Sherlock’s hand to point at him (but of course, John knows Sherlock would never kill his own brother). So instead, he humiliates Mycroft by making his parents reprimand him “how could you?! You should’ve done better”
Again, obviously this doesn’t mean what we saw is what really happened to Sherlock, that’s John imagining a preposterous trauma, but it was something like that. This way John would’ve foreshadowed the reveal that is yet to come
–along with other plot points, such as the fact that John suspects Moriarty has a brother (Eurus said so in passing), or Mycroft’s demise being long-overdue,
or that his (late?) wife who he didn’t trust was a mind controller psycopath, probably working with Moriarty. Really, him and Sherlock seem to be on the same page on many things, since TAB show us Sherlock dismissing John’s “twins” theory, hints at Mycroft’s “consumption” and is also ridden with subtext that
codes Mary as a villain
and connects her to Moriarty.
Of course, many other things also make TFP look as John’s dream to me (i.e. John feeling quite literally chained by manipulator-Mary, the level of weirdness of TFP isolating it from the other two episodes,
the bond-esque look of it, that it centers around doing an “emotional vivisection” to Sherlock –and why would Sherlock want to do that to himself again when he already did it in TAB, the fact that at the beggining John
confessed to Mycroft he was the one who came up with “this pantomine”, or that consistent subtext seems to suggest that John’s been shot in the head and is severly injured in hospital after losing a lot of blood having a typical near-death hallucination. If there’s one thing I’m sure about, is that whoever shot him didn’t do it a tranquilizer, it’s ridiculous).
On a final note, I believe this interpretation is valid
regardless of the way in which the whole episode is being presented to us for the sake of storytelling (and to make it more difficult for us to figure it out!), because it doesn’t necessarily need to be John’s dream from start to finish. By this I mean those flashbacks
from other episodes
(including Sherlock’s dream)
that we see
at the end of TFP, don’t have to be part of it. It’s interesting to consider that Shutter Island (one of the films from which they took both plot and cinematography as inspiration) gives us a perfect example of a story that starts inside the main character’s hallucination of psychosis (yes, it literally is the character’s wish fulfillment, because he can’t cope with what really happened, so he’d rather dream ‘a better story’), but as the movie progresses, we can’t tell for sure if what we’re seeing is still in his mind or if it stopped being his unreliable narration. Even in TAB they wanted to make it ambiguous whether those modern scenes were part of Sherlock’s dream or not.
Honestly, seeing TAB’s waterfall there is the same to me as hearing
Sherlock and Eurus playing the very theme of the show on their violins!
It’s impossible that the characters would be aware of it, yet it serves as a tool to wrap up the episode more neatly for the audience; but it doesn’t mean those details are still part of John’s dream.
In fact, I do believe those edits sucessfully manage to misdirect the viewer’s eye and attention
away from considering this reading. This is not new tho, they
resort to
this method all the time in the show to confuse and mislead the audience. ‘Fresh paint to disguise another smell.’
TL;DR: This is the fundamental reason why I think the plot of TFP happens from John’s perspective; it just makes sense to me that in the end it would all boil down to John ‘he’s always right’ Watson sort of ‘solving’ Sherlock (it’s even part of his character’s
arc),
and by doing so, figuring out things that make the very core of the
show. Plus, I consider it appropriate that John would try to do this at the same
time he’s unconsciously aknowledging his own issues, coming to terms with them, and
letting himself be embraced by Sherlock’s grounding love.
YEP. THIS EXACTLY. Thank you Marce.
It would also explain Sherlock playing Irene’s theme on the violin (during their first meeting) and Eurus asking if he had sex… like, that question has basically been eating away at John since ASIB
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with arguing from the obvious: it is a plot point in TLD that John was shot, we have the setup to a journey to his inner world / hallucination as the last thing we see in TLD. TFP is TAB-esque in its transitions and the way the story gets more surreal over the course of the episode, but distinctly non-TAB-like in its atmosphere, settings, and conclusions. It doesn’t take someone with a mind palace to hallucinate like a mofo. Also, a mind prison is a wonderful metaphor for the awful place John seems to have always lived in.
I agree that reading the waterfall as a simple red herring / misdirect is entirely possible, and that may be all it is. Here’s how I am tentatively framing it for myself.
In TAB, we’re given a clear indication that it’s possible for one person to “take over” the dream of another via a narrative insertion (eyebrow waggle). TAB appears to be John’s pov when we first hit the Victorian era. We are later told that Sherlock is reading John’s blog on the plane as he drifts off–this is the fact that justifies the opening “John” portion of TAB.
Any apparently anomalous scene in TFP could be run through a filter asking, could this be content inserted into the dream from a source outside the dreamer? I believe this to be the case with a few scenes, including the Mycroft / Moriarty background scene, the Holmes family discussion at the end, and, well–let’s imagine whether the waterfall moment could be coming from outside:
(Flashback to a long view of the gently rippling water in the swimming pool where Sherlock and Jim had their stand-off at the end of the “The Great Game.”) EURUS (softly, offscreen): Deep waters, Sherlock, all your life. (Sherlock’s distraught face is briefly overlaid with dark blue rippling water.) EURUS (softly, offscreen): In all your dreams. (Flashback to Victorian Holmes lying on the rocky ledge while the Reichenbach Falls thunder downwards behind him.) EURUS (softly, offscreen): Deep waters. (In the hall, Sherlock stares ahead of himself, his face covered with tears.) SHERLOCK (devastated): You killed him. (Dark rippling water overlays his face and for a moment a merged image of adult and young Sherlock stares sadly across the hall with tears on his face. Adult Sherlock lifts his head, looking towards the screen.) SHERLOCK: You killed my best friend. EURUS (quietly but with a hint of anger in her voice): I never had a best friend. I had no-one.
John was at the pool, and he’s heard Sherlock talk about wells, about sinking and being lost, so we don’t really need to source the pool or “deep waters” imagery. (We don’t need to source the water imagery at all, really–water is a widely accepted symbol in western mythology and literature for the emotional aspect of life, the primordial sea from which all things spring, for changeability. But let’s keep playing this game.)
Picture John in a hospital bed, Sherlock sitting beside him, leaning over him, staring into his face, searching for any hint of awareness. Mycroft paces the room behind him. Over the past hours, while they’ve waited to see if John will wake up, Mycroft has told Sherlock details about the real deal he made with Moriarty. The conversation has filtered through into John’s nightmare, mixed up with talk about Christmas and John’s memories of babies in mangers, the whole sequence of events steeped in a jumble of threats and misgivings about Sherlock, about whether he ever loved John at all, about whether he could, about who he is and why he never seemed to–
Now, John is starting to wake up.
Sherlock whispers to him, leaning closer so Mycroft can’t hear. “Maybe you’re dreaming, John. You’re just dreaming. Do you know, I dreamed about us, on the plane, when I thought I would never see you again. I dreamed about falling–no, flying. There was a waterfall. A great rushing waterfall, over a cliff. I was alone on that cliff, and you came and you saved me. In all your dreams, John, let me save you. I know you’re in deep waters, John. But please. Please.”
Mycroft speaks from behind him. “Sherlock.”
“Shut up,” Sherlock hisses. “This is your fault. You killed him. You killed my best friend.”
In John’s dream, he slips, he floats, haunted by the memory of telling Sherlock to go away, of his isolation, of the long nights spent in his flat alone. I never had a best friend, his demonic self whispers, confessing to Sherlock in a ruin of a room, like John himself is dying to do. I had no-one.
@may-shepard Oh my God, that was beautiful and if the next episode starts like that I could cartwheel into the sun!
I love that fact that you wrote “picture John in a hospital bed, Sherlock sitting beside him, leaning
over him, staring into his face, searching for any hint of awareness.
Mycroft paces the room behind him”, and I didn’t even have to picture it, because they even gave us the visual of Sherlock and Mycroft like visitors keeping an eye on John, who’s lying in bed in a very hospital-like room, only that Sherlock is the one pacing restlessly.
And I agree so much with the things you stated above. “A mind prison is a wonderful metaphor for the awful place John seems to have always lived in"; exactly! They couldn’t have coded John more repressed over the course of the show if they tried. I mean, they even made John literally
lock himself up in a cage, while begging Sherlock in a broken whisper to get him out.
And then TFP is about John’s foil/mirror Eurus being her whole life locked up in that prision. We see Moriarty (a symbol of sex both in TAB and in John’s dream) making a big entrance to Queen’s “I want to break free”. And then we see Sherlock breaking John free out of that well, in which he was chained up. Because, Sherlock is even capable of bringing down the walls of a room with his bare gay hands (just like the other ‘Drama Queen’, Freddy Mercury, does in that song’s music video). That’s how John sees Sherlock; as his saviour. I think the subtext is clear in that aspect.
And regarding what you mentioned about “content inserted into the dream from a source outside the dreamer", absolutely! In fact, I postedthis little videoa while ago, in which I proposed that John might be slipping in and out of consciousness, catching out-of-context words or phrases, and that at some point he may have heard the word ‘Sherrinford’. To me, it’s the reason why John has so many of those intercom speakers and earpieces everywhere (with preposterous capacity for reception). My favourite example of this, is the one I added to this video, where John suddenly hears “Moriarty’s” voice through the speakers, going“Don’t be alarmed, I’m here now!“, and stops in his tracks so confused, poor thing. Watch it and look at his face, frowning up at the speaker. That is NOT Moriarty, but Sherlock! It’s a desperate Sherlock having just found John lying there bleeding out, and calming him down while he calls the ambulance. Gets me everytime, it’s just heartbreaking, and it makes SO much sense to me. I want to think the “I love you” filtered into his dream as well… and that John couldn’t say it back only because he was still alseep in that hospital bed.
For me, it only took a single rewatch of TFP with the idea that it is John’s TAB to 100% convince me that this is an excellent reading. (Don’t click through that link, it’s a long string of posts with me liveblogging / yelling a ton.) I loved your videos so much–hey everybody, go watch them right now!
I definitely support the idea of Sherlock saying I love you over John’s unconscious body–MULTIPLE TIMES GOOD GOD. How very garridebs!
YES, all of this, especially sherlock and mycroft holding vigil over John’s hospital bed. Reminds me how SURE i am that john did the same in HLV, even if we weren’t shown.
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